A major corporate advertiser brazenly changed Thanksgiving this year to ‘Thanks-getting.’ It is not an inaccurate description of our 21st c. consumer attitude about the purpose of the holidays.
Add to that: Black Friday, which hemorrhaged forward into the traditional dinner hour of Thanksgiving Day; Small Business Saturday, a local attempt to hold onto business closer than the mall or world wide web; and Cyber-Monday, a stay at home online day for getting a buying high to have Christmas delivered to your door early (so you can buy more later).
How we have perverted the attitudes of thankfulness and giving into needfulness and getting. How we have forgotten God in the holidays formerly set aside to remember the Lord’s great bounty.
Isaiah 59:
Evil and Oppression
59 Behold, the Lord‘s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,
or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;
2 but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear.
3 For your hands are defiled with blood
and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies;
your tongue mutters wickedness.
Do we suppose that a loving and generous God will give us everything our hearts desire even when we continually sin against the Lord by our covetousness?
9 Therefore justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not overtake us;
we hope for light, and behold, darkness,
and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
Have you given thanks to the Lord? Or have your forgotten the Lord in your thanks-getting?
Therefore, will your great expectations for the gifts of the ‘holidays’ fail to remember the Savior, the Christ promised to sinners as a gift for our salvation? Will you remember the great gift of our Lord given to you this Christmas?
And if you will not remember the Lord your God, who will redeem you from your sin? For you cannot repay the great mercy the Lord has shown us in a Savior born in a manger in Bethlehem of Judea to redeem our sins on a Cross in Zion.
“And a Redeemer will come to Zion,
to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the Lord. – Isaiah 59:20
Will you not turn from your transgressions and sins to follow your loving Redeemer born in a manger to die on a Cross, who IS and will return on the clouds to rule in all righteousness?
While we change names of holidays, would the following change not be most appropriate for a 21st c. world of sinners?
CHRISTmas renamed CHRIST-getting!
For Jesus Christ IS the True gift of CHRISTmas to the world.
Joyous Christ-getting! (Christmas is more than just a holiday.)
Christmas trivia:
Did you know that the GREEN in Christmas colors represents the birth of Jesus Christ &
RED represents the Sacrifice of the Christ on the Cross for our sins?
To be continued…
This is second in this year’s messages by Roger Harned in preparation for Christmas, in the year of our Lord, 2015.
